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Well Done God!: Selected Prose and Drama of B. S. Johnson
B. S. Johnson is a truly unique British writer, a cult figure whose original and experimental fiction has, since his tragically early death in 1973, been rediscovered by many subsequent generations of writers and readers. In many ways the heir to Joyce and Beckett, Johnson played with form and narrative across many genres: novels, plays, poetry and memoir.
To commemorate the eightieth anniversary of his birth, two of the foremost scholars of B. S. Johnson, Professor Philip Tew and Dr Julia Jordan, have joined forces with Jonathan Coe, author of the prize-winning biography, Like a Fiery Elephant, to offer a selection of his greatest uncollected or unavailable writing. Well Done God! includes his major prose work, Aren’t You Rather Young to be Writing Your Memoirs?, six plays and a selection of his remarkable journalism.
501 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 1, 2013
3 people are currently reading
69 people want to read
About the author
B.S. Johnson
40 books130 followersB. S. Johnson (Bryan Stanley Johnson) was an English experimental novelist, poet, literary critic and film-maker.
Johnson was born into a working class family, was evacuated from London during World War II and left school at sixteen to work variously as an accounting clerk, bank junior and clerk at Standard Oil Company. However, he taught himself Latin in the evenings, attended a year's pre-university course at Birkbeck College, and with this preparation, managed to pass the university exam for King's College London.
After he graduated with a 2:2, Johnson wrote a series of increasingly experimental and often acutely personal novels. Travelling People (1963) and Albert Angelo (1964) were relatively conventional (though the latter became famous for the cut-through pages to enable the reader to skip forward), but The Unfortunates (1969) was published in a box with no binding (readers could assemble the book any way they liked) and House Mother Normal (1971) was written in purely chronological order such that the various characters' thoughts and experiences would cross each other and become intertwined, not just page by page, but sentence by sentence. Johnson also made numerous experimental films, published poetry, and wrote reviews, short stories and plays.
A critically acclaimed film adaptation of the last of the novels published while he was alive, Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry (1973) was released in 2000.
At the age of 40, increasingly depressed by his failure to succeed commercially, and beset by family problems, Johnson committed suicide. Johnson was largely unknown to the wider reading public at the time of his death, but has a growing cult following. Jonathan Coe's 2004 biography Like a Fiery Elephant (winner of the 2005 Samuel Johnson prize) has already led to a renewal of interest in Johnson's work.
Johnson was born into a working class family, was evacuated from London during World War II and left school at sixteen to work variously as an accounting clerk, bank junior and clerk at Standard Oil Company. However, he taught himself Latin in the evenings, attended a year's pre-university course at Birkbeck College, and with this preparation, managed to pass the university exam for King's College London.
After he graduated with a 2:2, Johnson wrote a series of increasingly experimental and often acutely personal novels. Travelling People (1963) and Albert Angelo (1964) were relatively conventional (though the latter became famous for the cut-through pages to enable the reader to skip forward), but The Unfortunates (1969) was published in a box with no binding (readers could assemble the book any way they liked) and House Mother Normal (1971) was written in purely chronological order such that the various characters' thoughts and experiences would cross each other and become intertwined, not just page by page, but sentence by sentence. Johnson also made numerous experimental films, published poetry, and wrote reviews, short stories and plays.
A critically acclaimed film adaptation of the last of the novels published while he was alive, Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry (1973) was released in 2000.
At the age of 40, increasingly depressed by his failure to succeed commercially, and beset by family problems, Johnson committed suicide. Johnson was largely unknown to the wider reading public at the time of his death, but has a growing cult following. Jonathan Coe's 2004 biography Like a Fiery Elephant (winner of the 2005 Samuel Johnson prize) has already led to a renewal of interest in Johnson's work.
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November 23, 2020
Overall, this wasn't really that good. I liked the parts where he talked about his books; the short stories were hit and miss; the plays weren't good with the exception of one which was just the script for his film You're Human Like the Rest of Them, which I'd already seen; and the journalism too was hit and miss. There were some interesting articles, but a few, especially those concerning sports, were just plain boring. Perhaps this book could have faired a little better if they cut out a couple of the plays/journal articles and replaced them with some of B.S. Johnson's unpublished poetry, which I've only heard a few of from watching his film Fat Man on a Beach.
I would only recommend this book to those who have already read the majority of B.S. Johnson's oeuvre and would like to get their hands on more of his work, or who are simply interested in reading about Johnson discussing his books, though I'd keep your expectations set at a minimum.
I would only recommend this book to those who have already read the majority of B.S. Johnson's oeuvre and would like to get their hands on more of his work, or who are simply interested in reading about Johnson discussing his books, though I'd keep your expectations set at a minimum.
Displaying 1 of 1 review